A Book of Cornwall

by S. Baring-Gould

S. Columb Minor bench-ends, according to Hals, were of black oak, and bore the date 1525, and it had a fine rood-screen with loft, "a most curious and costly piece of workmanship, carved, and painted with gold, silver, vermillion, and bice, and is the masterpiece of art in those parts of that kind." This has all disappeared now.

S. Agnes' Head, pronounced S. Anne's, presumedly takes its name from Ann, the mother of the gods among the Irish Celts, and probably also among the Cymri. She gives her name to the Two Paps of Ana, in the county of Kerry. The parish was constituted late. There was no such parish at the time of the Conquest, and the present church was built and consecrated in 1484.

A story is told of a house in S. Agnes. When Wesley visited this part of Cornwall preaching, he was refused shelter elsewhere than in an ancient mansion that was unoccupied because haunted by ghosts.

Wesley went to the house, and sat up reading by candlelight. At midnight he heard a noise in the hall, and on issuing from his room saw that a banquet was spread, and that richly-apparelled ladies and gentlemen were about the board.

Then one cavalier, with dark, piercing eyes and a pointed black beard, wearing a red feather in his cap, said: "We invite you to eat and to drink with us," and pointed to an empty chair.

Wesley at once took the place indicated, but before he put in his mouth a bite of food or drank a drop, said: "It is my custom to ask a blessing; stand all!" Then the spectres rose.

Wesley began his accustomed grace, "The name of God, high over all----" when suddenly the room darkened, and all the apparitions vanished.

The story of the creation, subsequent history, and extinction of those English boroughs which were swept away by the Reform Bill of 1832, and which were commonly designated as pocket or rotten boroughs, is too curious an episode in Parliamentary history to be allowed to remain in the limbo of Parliamentary reports--a charnel-house of the bones of facts--unclothed with the personal reminiscences and local details which invest these dry bones with flesh, and give to them a living interest.

In a very few years there will not be a man alive who can recall the last election for them. Their story is this: They were creations of the Crown when its tenure of power was insecure, and the object aimed at was to pack the House of Commons with members who were mere creatures of the Crown. The shock of the Reformation had upset men's minds. What had been held sacred for ages was sacred no longer, and the men who had been encouraged to profane the altar were ready enough to turn their hands against the throne. The revolt of the Parliament under Charles I. was long in brewing; its possibility was seen, and the creation of pocket boroughs was devised as an expedient to prevent it.

In order that the Crown might have a strong body of obedient henchmen in the House, a number of villages or mere insignificant hamlets were accorded the franchise, villages and hamlets on land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall that went with the royal family as an appanage of the Prince of Wales, or were under the control of pliant courtiers. As the country was in a ferment of religious passion, many, if not most, of these new boroughs were specially chosen because far removed from ecclesiastical influence, either because they lay at the junction of several parishes, or because they were places remote from churches.